


and above the lilies weep

by westmoor



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Big october mood, Character Death, Eventual (mild) Geraskier, Hardly Read At All To Be Honest, M/M, Non-Human Jaskier | Dandelion, Not Beta Read, Not Canon Compliant, Protective Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Self-Indulgent, Slow and uneventful for all your slow and uneventful fic needs, author is not a native english speaker (sorry), folklore inspired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:40:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26746750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westmoor/pseuds/westmoor
Summary: In which Geralt stumbles upon a forlorn village with a decades-old mystery leaving a trail of deaths in its wake.-The witcher sighed. “Anything else I should know?” And for the first time in their conversation, the miller hesitated, gaze skittering to the window and the hills and beyond, before responding in a hushed tone:“Some nights, when the wind is right, there is music from the moor.”
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 44
Kudos: 289





	1. the shadows come to play

**Author's Note:**

> _The stones crack open and the water burns  
>  The shadows come to dance, my love  
> The shadows come to play  
> The shadows come to dance, my love  
> The shadows come to stay_  
> 

The note was nearly as vague as it was worn where Geralt pulled it from its place on a fence pole by the roadside.

He had ignored the first few he’d passed, assumed by their weathered condition that they’d simply been left out, forgotten by whoever put them up so far from busier routes.

It had been years since he last passed through this area, if he ever had. Sparse population meant fewer people for monsters to interfere with - and likewise - and it’s location too far from cities or trade routes and lacking resources for industry or agriculture made for low fees.

Regardless, he was here, and heading their way anyway. It wouldn’t do much harm to collect the information, he told himself, even if he didn’t decide to take their coin.

* * *

Normally arriving in town held a certain routine: Find a place to stay the night and secure the contract, in whichever order. The latter meant seeking out the alderman, or the sheriff, sometimes the mayor, but it soon became clear he would find neither.

Calling it a village would be generous, it was barely a hamlet, an assembly of houses clustered near the riverbank and a small mill. Around them a scattered few farms and sheepsheds made the most of grass-grown hills too poor for proper crops, and beyond their rickety fences and hewn stone walls, lay miles upon miles of cold and desolate moor.

Its inhabitants seemed much the same, from what Geralt saw of them, rugged in a way that people only got after generations spent weathering sour winds and perpetual damp from the wasteland they bordered.

Inquiring about the contract didn’t lead to a mayor or alderman, but into the miller’s kitchen, where a middle-aged man with broad hands and a brow creased even beyond his years set a cup of ale in front of him.

The room’s interior was for simple tastes but well kept, Geralt found himself noting as he leaned back on the bench, listening to the miller recounting the details.If he still held doubts before coming here, they weren’t eased.

“You mean to tell me, after seventy years, no one knows what this thing is?”

“No one returns to describe it!” The man across the table defended, arms outstretched in exasperation. “Though not for lack of trying, a whole party went out once. Five or six men, only two came back the next morning. Half frozen and mad with fear, both of them. I was just a lad then, but you don’t forget such things.”

“And they didn’t just get lost -” Like people do, Geralt finished to himself, all the time.  
“They left tracks.” The miller interrupted, and Geralt stilled. “Bootprints. Not stumbling over themselves, kept a straight line. Right from the cabin and to that damned place.” Sensing the change in demeanor, he pushed on. “The cottage is still serviceable, we’ll provide food and supplies and anything else you may need. If it’s nothing as you say, you’ll have a night of peace and quiet, and if not…” He paused for a breath. “Please, sir.”

The witcher sighed. “Anything else I should know?” And for the first time in their conversation, the miller hesitated, gaze skittering to the window and the hills and beyond, before responding in a hushed tone:

“Some nights, when the wind is right, there is music from the moor.”

* * *

By morning a fog had settled snug about town at the edge of the moor, so thick only the clamor of sheep bells on the hills confirmed the existence of a world beyond its shroud. The air seemed heavy with it, each inhale as damp as the exhale, and Geralt felt a hurry to get moving lest his lungs grow mildew. It would clear soon, the miller’s wife had assured him. They expected rain.

As the hours dragged toward noon only cloudy fragments remained, clinging to rises and hillocks in the distance, leaving the barren vastness clear in view. Its span appeared endless even to a Witcher’s senses, signs of habitation having faded and disappeared behind him as he passed from groomed farmland, through the craggy heath, and onto the great moor proper.

Without the plodding and braying of livestock it seemed deceptively void of life, save for the company of a lone golden plover flitting between diminutive birches that had taken root wherever the turf lay deep enough, rising and writhing from the ground in ever which direction as though growth itself was an agony.

Geralt had left Roach at a farmstead on the outer edge of the village, reassured by roughened but gentle hands on the bridle and a shared pasture with a stocky draught pony. The path he’d been instructed to stay on, while even enough and mostly dry, wasn’t designed for horses and would’ve been arduous had he insisted on bringing her, too narrow and winding, in places only differentiated from the numerous sheep tracks crossing it by foot-tall cairns stacked evenly upon mounds and larger rocks. The importance of staying true to it had been made clear and now he could also guess why, flanked on both sides by occasional ponds and wide mats of moss and cottongrass, an alluring imitation of solid ground.

As it was, on two feet and carrying little but his most basic equipment and what provisions the villagers had supplied him with, the trek was a peaceful one - a slight breeze stirred the blooming heather, its sharp scent mixed with the musk of bared acidic soil. It was pleasant, but for the dulcet undertones of water and decay, the sweetness of rot wafting up from the bogs surrounding him now on all sides, a steadfast reminder of the task at hand.

People getting lost on the moor were, as Geralt had reminded his employers, not typically within the realm of a Witcher’s job description.

Neither, to be frank, were hunts for notoriously underdescribed and possibly imaginary bog demons in exchange for a cold cut and next to no money. They didn’t concern themselves with campfire stories and cautionary tales.

Which was why he could almost hear Vesemir scoffing from across the northern half of the continent when the small shepherd’s cottage came into view in the distance, as drab and grey as its environment.

But he was here, there was no denying it, and similarly undeniable was the steadily mounting tugging at his core toward the small single-storey turf-roofed heap of rocks that stood as a centre stage in this bizarre tale he’d stumbled into.

Proper theories or identification of the creature remained absent, but the story of its progression was detailed in contrast. Nearly seventy years earlier to the day, it went - a great storm had blown in that night wreaking enough destruction to be memorable in its own right, they’d had to rebuild most of the mill - some dandy had taken the wrong turn at a crossing up the road.

Galloping into the village in a terrible hurry to reach an event in a southern court and with the storm at his heels the stranger (a troubadour or some sort of nobleman according to their remaining witness, though she’d been only a girl at the time) inquired about a way across the moor and the inhabitants haltingly relented, but gave ample warning: The path was treacherous even for seasoned shepherds, they’d said, and in such a storm as was brewing it was surely suicide.

Too stubborn or desperate to heed reason, however, the traveller stole off while farmers secured their livestock and set upon the moor, his absence only noted when the rest of them had settled in against the weather and counted heads. At the first lull in the wind the blacksmith’s two oldest sons volunteered to go searching for the man and headed out, against the pleas of their parents, in the hopes of rescuing the poor strangers whose fate was now hanging by a thread. It was the last either of them were seen alive.

A search party was sent out as soon as the worst of the storm had settled, the blacksmith and his wife themselves half mad with fear for their children, but to no avail. Tracks of the three lead safely to the stone cottage beyond the heath and evidence suggested someone had rested there. But then, to their confusion, the tracks lead back out. Not in the direction of the sturdy trail back, or the riskier one onwards, but west - knee deep in peat moss and marsh until they sunk into the bog.

They had thought it an accident at first, just a terrible tragedy, but soon enough a pattern emerged: Every now and then, when the moon waned and weather turned sour, people would go missing on the moor, leaving behind no clues of their fate but a sunken trail into the frigid waters of the mire. Others would speak of footsteps and knocking, of ghostly lights and roving shadows and sometimes, in the quiet dark, a sweet voice calling out, singing in the night.

Soon enough no shepherd would sleep on the moor, and it seemed the harder they tried to rid themselves of their monster or curse, the more people were lost to the bottomless depths.


	2. the shadows come to stay

The door screeched loud enough to wake the dead when Geralt finally wrenched it open. 

Forcing the hinges to give and stepping inside, the noon light filtered in through clouds of dust kicked up by his movements and the sudden draft. Seven decades of disuse permeated each musty whiff of breath but the interior looked in otherwise good repair, despite most locals being too scared to spend a night there it still saw some use as day shelter when local shepherds collected their flocks from summer grazing.

The single room within was sufficient, if not spacious, for its purpose - small enough to be efficiently heated by the tall turf hearth bricked into the far wall. A spare stack of sods filled the space under the bed on the right-hand side, overhung by lofty shelves creating a rather cosy alcove. Beneath a small window on the opposite wall stood a rough wooden table and a rickety chair, and a short bench took up the last of the space.

Before he could set his pack down on the narrow bench to properly examine his lodgings, the first droplets of rain tapped the tiny windowpane. By the time he dug out some candles and kindling, it had built to a steady thrumming.

He decided against a more thorough search of the perimeter, the lack of elevation leaving miles unobscured to a simple glance and the premise of the stories suggested any disruption would seek him out if it so intended, and instead set about organizing his supplies and settling in for the long evening ahead. 

Daylight faded quickly, driven away by darkening clouds blown in from the northeast and the wind picking up to whip against the sheltering walls. They were thick, however, and once the turf got burning a single candle was enough to keep the encroaching night at bay for a while longer.

Rifling through the few possessions left by previous inhabitants he went to yank the heap of rags and blankets from the bed, meaning to hang them up and chase out what moisture had settled there. While not intending to sleep on the job he could at least lay down flat to meditate, make the most of whatever rest was offered. 

Something rattled. He paused. 

Pulling more carefully and divesting the cloths on the floor, he bent to investigate the wooden bench of the bedframe. Upon some prodding the innermost board came loose and uncovered a hollow space beneath, hidden from the rest of the room by the pile of turf cut for burning. The darkness of the recess from the shine of the light was a challenge even for his eyes, and he reached in blindly, bending and searching until his fingertips brushed a smooth, solid object. Gingerly wrapping his fingers around that of it which he could reach, he hoisted it into the light.

It was a lute. 

A valuable lute even, by the looks of it, elven made or a decent copy of elven made if the elaborate carvings were anything to go by. 

Geralt knew little of music and less about instruments, but he did know craftsmanship, and turning it over in his hands he saw quality not just in the intricacies of the pattern weaving across its body but in the wood itself, in the make and fit of each individual component. At first glance it seemed almost new, unblemished and gleaming, but inspection soon rectified that impression: It wasn’t unused as much as it was well-used, tended to and cared for by one whose hands knew how to properly maintain it, like a smith’s favourite hammer or his own silver sword, old but not worn down by age.

Later, he would have no concept of how long he stood as entranced, weighing it in his hands and pondering the whereabouts of its owner. There had been a musician involved in the first incident, he recalled, but that notion was quickly pushed aside. That would’ve made it near a century old, and drought and moisture, the rise and fall of the seasons should’ve long since contorted the wood, warping the neck or snapping the pegs from their holdings. One of the shepherds then, maybe, an unusually gifted one. People met so many odd fates.

He turned it over once more, strings sharp under his fingertips as if daring him to strum but he kept them fixed - even in this solitude it seemed a violation to tinker with an instrument so clearly possessed by another. 

Instead, he set it gently down on the bench by the table, leaned it upright against the stone wall. And then he turned back to the sheets and blankets, flipped and spread them out for the heat to take hold.

Nothing seemed in a rush to disturb him, and Geralt was glad for it. Although he should be pushing to progress his current undertaking and move on to the next contract - ideally a little closer to civilization and for a far better salary - perhaps at least the miller had spoken truly: He might just be in for a quiet and peaceful night, undeniably comfortable as warmth seeped into every enclosed corner and crevice, and soon enough he had the thick waft of brewing mutton stew to go with it.

He had pushed the old chair back against the wall and sat at an angle from the door, let his eyes fall shut. Those weapons not attached to his person were within easy reach and no sight was required to find them should anything succeed in catching him unaware. 

Instead, his attention drifted to the hiss and crackle of the fire and the stew slowly thickening in its hanging pot. Of the fabled music of the moor he heard nothing, save for the howling of the gales through the tall chimney, what had earlier been a stiff breeze now battering and breaking against rough but sturdy walls like a great starving beast.

Knowledge of what wreckage such weather would’ve wrought on a common camp made shelter all the sweeter, and despite himself, Geralt sunk into it how one might sink into a steaming bath. 

Tension seeped from taut shoulders, but the more he leaned into the quiet the more disconcerting it became. The sounds of fire and food, of his own heartbeat and breathing, should be enough to fill the small room but they weren’t, it sounded to his ears as though something crucial was missing and once acknowledged it couldn’t be shaken, digging into his mind like an unreachable itch. He couldn’t pinpoint its source, or lack thereof. Across the table, the lute stayed as silent as any shrine.

\---

Supper was long since finished, half of it left to mull until morning, and the day would’ve long since faded even without the cover of storm clouds when Geralt was roused from his thoughts. He had paid no attention to them at first, dismissed as just another trick of the roaring wind, perhaps something knocked loose and toyed with. Their hurried approach snapped him out of it.

Footsteps. 

Not the shuffle of four-hoofed ungulates and lacking the stealth of any predator, they dragged and stumbled heavy through heather and bracken, sounding absurdly and distinctly human.

Fixating each of his senses on its trek beyond the windowless wall Geralt could hear breathing, shallow and ragged, wet and sputtering as though they - or it - had already inhaled half the bog. 

He leaned toward the window with furrowed brow as a shadow passed it but the single candle in the room held little against the thickness of the night beyond, and rain washed down the pane in heavy waves, twisting what shapes he might otherwise have made out into unrecognizable phantoms.

His hand grasped the hilt of his dagger in the same instant as something heavy crashed against the door. Rapid knocking saw him on his feet in the next, only mild hesitation before he flicked the latch. After all, ghouls and drowners were rarely polite enough to knock.

Whoever, whatever he had expected to meet at the other side of that door, this wasn’t it.

  
  


The boy - or man, rather - was lean, and smooth-faced, and clung to the doorframe with hands that shivered so badly it must’ve hurt. 

Any colour in his face was washed out by chilled torrents and sparse light, pallor accentuated by flattened dark hair that clung to his brow. But his heart hammered in his chest, rabbit-quick, eyes bright if frantic where they sought for Geralt’s in the darkness. They were blue.

Belatedly, Geralt realised he was silhouetted and standing in shadow, his face likely completely inscrutable to human eyes. Later still, he realised the stranger was talking, rambling, voice pitched high to pierce the rush threatening to steal it.

“- know it’s hardly an appropriate time to be calling on decent company but I saw the light, and I - I seem to have lost my horse, you see, something must’ve spooked her, the poor dear, and…”

Geralt said nothing - or he might have, too taken aback to be certain - but pulled away to leave a gap wide enough to pass through. The youth needed no further prompting and tumbled more than walked into the offered refuge.

Sharp eyes followed every movement the newcomer made, even as Geralt shouldered the door shut and firmly replaced the latch, no twitch or turn dodged his scrutiny. He noticed, then, how the room and cabin itself barely received a cursory glance, while Geralt’s own belongings - his packs, cloak and swords - were subjects of far more interest. He also noticed how, no longer straining against the throes of nature, tremors ran up an ill-clad back, arms wrapped tight around his torso as though it would keep each breath from rattling through his chest.

The doublet he was wearing had once been fine, now soaked so thoroughly in grime he looked to have fallen in the mire and crawled back out, it’s colour indiscernible. His breeches were in much the same state, sodden boots trailing mud across the floor.

«You’ll want to take that off,» Geralt grumbled before he could consider his words. Their recipient spun to face him, wide-eyed and tense. He tried again, less gruffly: «Or you’ll freeze.»

That was met with a halting nod, and a darting look searched his face before slow compliance saw the first soaked garment pulled from hunched-in shoulders. The likewise stained shirt underneath was so finely woven water might as well have dissolved it with how close it clung to skin, no imagination required to behold the gentle tapering curve of his waist nor the smooth swell of muscle in his upper arms, sharp point of a collarbone accentuated by shadows cast by candlelight. 

Geralt promptly averted his eyes, the walls he’d seen as lofty mere moments before suddenly drawing stiflingly close, trying to provide some modicum of privacy despite the unwillingness to fully turn his back on someone currently so close to his own swords.

Lack of distractions and senses far too sharp to be a blessing in the moment left him still all too aware of the activity at the corner of his vision, bent first to divest of the boots then straightening to full height, and even as numb fingers fumbled with the fastenings that cinched the breeches high at his waist, Geralt’s mind was drawn to a performer he once knew in Vizima, all strong and slender limbs and fluid motions. 

Cleared of the heavy silk and velvet and before those hands could venture near the gossamer-sheer chemise - fabric that thin would dry quick enough - Geralt grabbed his own woollen blanket and thrust it at the man, and waved towards the narrow bench where the lute still stood propped against the wall.

Only once the table provided a modest barrier between the stranger and most of the things that could’ve been wielded as weapons did the witcher move his hand from where it hovered near the hilt of his dagger and turn to the hearth, revived the fire with another sod, and reached for the copper pot.

“Thank you,” the present companion said and leaned in to cup his hands around the bowl that had been set in front of him, seeking its heat. He sounded earnest even through gritted teeth, jaw still clenched tight to keep his teeth from clattering. “My name is Jaskier, by the way. Since you asked.”

“I didn’t,” said Geralt, settling on the chair opposite.

“I noticed.” Even without fully looking, and the bowl obscuring the lower half of his face, he could tell Jaskier was smirking. “I also noticed you didn’t give me yours.”

“It’s Geralt.” Idle chitchat had not been part of the contract but the words spilt into being before he could divert them, and for a fateful breath he felt as though petering on the edge of something he couldn’t identify.

“At the risk of coming across as overly direct, Geralt, what regrettable decision led you all the way out here?”

Geralt chanced a suspicious glance at him, but the man - Jaskier - seemed utterly unperturbed. Was this a game of some sort? “I’m working.”

“Ah!” Jaskier raised a hand and tilted his head as though in realisation, in honesty or mockery Geralt couldn’t quite make out. “It’s funny,” he said, nodding to his right where the lute still lay upright. “You didn’t immediately strike me as a lutist, in fact, with those two very scary-looking swords I would’ve sooner taken you for a wayward Witcher. But I understand now that I must’ve been mistaken.”

The half incredulous, half-amused huff Geralt failed to contain garnered a victorious grin, beaming even as he turned his attention back to the stew.

  
  


“So you _are_ a Witcher,” Jaskier continued at length. “And you are here for a job, and you do not play the lute.” He had a pleasant voice, an innate ebb and flow of tone that made for easy listening. “Are you here to kill me, then?”

Geralt regarded the lad carefully, weighing his options. His hair had started drying, he remarked, tawny brown and no longer plastered down but curling slightly across his forehead, the smouldering fire giving him a russet halo. The pallor of his skin had also faded, warming instead to a healthy flush that could’ve been a trick of the light, but also could’ve not. The line of his blanket-covered shoulders, the tapping of his fingertips against the now-empty supper bowl, nervous energy and ease in equal parts. Something unnamable tightened in Geralt’s chest. 

“I suspect I’m a bit late for that.”

An outburst would’ve been expected, a shock or a scene, but instead it earned a full-bodied laugh, rich and zestful like summer wine. 

“I suspect you are.“ And then he extended his arm, blanket slipping back off his shoulder and the lute, thus far remaining a silent spectator, found its way into deftly knowledgeable hands.

  
  


Time passed in relative peace, bard strumming and tuning and the witcher mulling, before Jaskier again broke the silence. “You didn’t quite answer my question.”

Sensing the sudden gravity in the air, Geralt turned to fully face him. He wasn’t one for sweet lies. He never had been. “As long as they have cause, they’ll send others.” 

“I didn’t - They don’t!” Agitation sparked as a flame in dry grass and for the first time since entering the cabin, an edge of desperation crept back into his voice. “Those two - the sons of the town blacksmith, I believe - the first ones, they told me to meet them here. Gave their word that they would help me, promised a way through this desolate hell of a country and I know it was naive. I’m not a fucking _fool._ But I had to get to Cintra, that was my _chance_ , but then when they showed up and they…” 

Despite decades of experience in human disfavour, Geralt felt a chill run down his spine.

Slumping in his seat, the outpouring faltered as though the words he tried to speak had clogged his throat and wavered, motioned toward the windowless western wall and beyond it, to the bottomless mire into which single tracks of bootprints now strayed each morning after rain or storm. That from which nothing was recovered, and where nothing could decay.

Some moments went by before he could speak again, before the wet in his eyes no longer threatened suffocation. Geralt let him have them. “The others, the ones who came after… I didn’t mean to. I only meant to scare them off, I swear to the fucking Gods, Geralt. I never hurt anyone who left me a choice.”

At a loss for anything better, Geralt could only nod. There was always a risk he could be lying, a steeled voice chimed in his mind. He didn’t think he was.

The lute was set down lightly on the bench. “I’d leave if I could,” its owner said, voice more collected. “But it seems I’m either in here,” and he leaned his elbows on the table, mostly-dry chemise rolled back over wiry, delicate wrists. “Or I’m out there,” his eyes fastened on the opposite wall as though he could pierce it with a glance. “Or I’m nowhere at all.”

In the tender glow of their sparse light Jaskier seemed near otherworldly, unreachable as though the great moor lay between them in its entirety, and yet Geralt had wanted nothing more in that moment than to cross it, would’ve travelled every wretched wasteland on the Continent just to feel the angle of that cheekbone underneath his own fingers, to know the curve of that lip for himself.

He did.

\---

“I expect I’ll hear no more of you.”

The storm had abated and the sky cleared enough for a moon just past full to peer through. Jaskier sauntered ahead of him, shiver-thin shirt billowing slightly in the lingering breeze, looking as white and luminous in the cold light as the heads of cottongrass below.

“If you do, will you come back?” The weight of the implication did little to temper the spark of mischief in the eyes that turned on him, as deep and as blue and bright as the heather-framed pools filled by rain, now still as mirrors and gleaming through wisps of fog. Slender fingers not missing a note where they found and plucked the strings underneath them. 

Geralt felt more than formed the fond upturn of his lips. “I might come back if I don’t.”

The laugh it earned him rang pure and true as silver, chiming like bells it would carry for miles if the wind blew right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope I didn't waste your time. It is what it had to be.


End file.
